I'm so psyched to have found this stuff. There is a central, publicly accessible repository for all the business conducted by the Green Party US National Committee, a group of just over 100 representatives from various states and party caucuses.

​In Green circles recently, there has been no small amount of hullabaloo surrounding the Green Party National Committee's Proposal 835, amending the platform for adoption of language that opposes capitalism. Much of this hullabaloo ignores the additional language opposing state socialism. Below is the new language added to the platform's Chapter IV on Economic Justice and Sustainability.

The Green Party seeks to build an alternative economic system based on ecology and decentralization of power, an alternative that rejects both the capitalist system that maintains private ownership over almost all production as well as the state-socialist system that assumes control over industries without democratic, local decision making. We believe the old models of capitalism (private ownership of production) and state socialism (state ownership of production) are not ecologically sound, socially just, or democratic and that both contain built-in structures that advance injustices.

Instead we will build an economy based on large-scale green public works, municipalization, and workplace and community democracy. Some call this decentralized system "ecological socialism," "communalism," or the "cooperative commonwealth," but whatever the terminology, we believe it will help end labor exploitation, environmental exploitation, and racial, gender, and wealth inequality and bring about economic and social justice due to the positive effects of democratic decision making.

Production is best for people and planet when democratically owned and operated by those who do the work and those most affected by production decisions. This model of worker and community empowerment will ensure that decisions that greatly affect our lives are made in the interests of our communities, not at the whim of centralized power structures of state administrators or of capitalist CEOs and distant boards of directors. Small, democratically run enterprises, when embedded in and accountable to our communities, will make more ecologically sound decisions in materials sourcing, waste disposal, recycling, reuse, and more. Democratic, diverse ownership of production would decentralize power in the workplace, which would in turn decentralize economic power more broadly.

David Cobb, Green nominee for president in 2004, shared the post above on Facebook.​This is incredibly exciting news in more ways than one. Personally, I cheer the Platform Committee for taking this risk.

The new language will appear in copies of the Green Party's 2016 platform that will be distributed to delegates and others when they convene in H-Town this August.

The decision to reject was not without controversy: Many established Greens objected to it for various reasons. The risk, from the beginning, was not only that mainstream America would accuse the Greens of pining for the good old days of Joe Stalin, but that GPUS might lose a fair number of its long-standing members over its new stance.

Among Millennials in particular, but by no means exclusively, "socialism" is no longer a dirty word. It is a rational alternative to an economic system that thrives on exploitation and puts millions in debt peonage.

I hope that you read and re-read the quote pictured above with an open mind. The platform also rejects state socialism, while embracing eco-socialism explicitly.

I also hope that you will read Naomi Klein'sThis Changes Everything, which illustrates how capitalism is incompatible with protecting the natural environment on which all life—human life included—depends. While the book is thoroughly researched and sourced, it is not such a scholarly work that readers will drown in polysyllables. But even environmentalists who think they've heard it all before may find their heads spinning at the depth and breadth of the climate crisis and the solutions that should have been imposed years ago.

Klein is not especially comfortable with state socialism either, but it may be the only way to rescue our world from climate catastrophe. The state won't budge, however, until the people get off their collective arse and make budging politically imperative.

DBC Sez...

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